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| march 2003 |
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| Remember Me 2 | 12:49am monday, 31st march |
Remember me when the world is ending, and the stars blink out one by one, and the moon crumbles into dust.
Remember me when you live a fantasy come true and can't help but wonder if it is only a dream after all, this whole life.
Remember me when you reach the peaks, remember me when you sink into the valleys — that one is not as good without the other.
Remember me when the world collapses around you and you wonder why, and you never wondered why when all was well.
Remember me when you discover that it's not just how you look at life, but how life looks at you.
Remember me when time runs out, and you wish you could borrow against when there was nothing but time.
Remember me when God taps you on the shoulder and you fear to turn around because you know who it is — and what He wants.
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| Outside Myself | 12:07am saturday, 29th march |
Once I stood outside myself, and I watched myself praying:
saw me ask the impossible, saw me blind to prayers answered:
much the easier to judge yourself when you're out of your mind.
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| History? | 12:12am friday, 28th march |
Is this history? Is what we are experiencing in this day and age what will be written in the books, to be soaked in by high school students some far-off time? I ask because, you know, "History never looks like history when you are living through it." [John W. Gardner] And it's not just the war I'm talking about — there are technological innovations happening that dizzy the mind: nanotechnology, quantum computing, cloning, genetic engineering: we're lurching forward into some sort of brave new world, it seems. Is there a revolution in our midst? I dunno. I am too caught in living my everyday existence, I think, to properly notice that which will shake the foundations of the world. History never looks like history when you're in it because we're just trying to make it through the day, live our lives — history is a thing far away, and too separated from the livelong day to be considered as actually happening in the present tense. History never happens; history will always be something that happened.
I wonder about the psychology of time; if this is history, I will try to commit to memory these sights and smells, right here, right now. You never know if time will remember this now better than you will, and all you can do in your old age is nod your head, Yes, I was there, too.
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| Recollection 10 | 12:01am thursday, 27th march |
There were good times, too, in my madness. Things that brought me joy for brief flashes — I must admit there were those instances. More than once, I had visions of Heaven; they were sometimes scant, like a look through a small hole in the ceiling of my mind, but the light that shone in — how splendid it was. There were poignant moments, too, if I remember correctly, but I don't think many or even any of them make any sense out of the context of what was going on in my madness at the time. The same, I think, goes for humor: if I were to tell you the joke, there would be no way you would get it, unless I were to explain to you just about everything that was happening and happened up to that point. But like I say, it wasn't all pain and horror — though there was plenty of that.
If I think back, I can recall that strange things made me happy. Once, I bought a pen, and I was happy for the rest of the day just because I had it. It was like the most bizarre second childhood I could think of. (My maturity level was certainly on par with a child's, in any case.) If you rule out the drugs, which really didn't make me happy — just numbed everything so I thought I was happy — there were in the simple things, too, the little joys that keep you keeping on: a gentle breeze in a summer evening, a sip of water when I was thirsty, a moment of quiet after a hard day. Aside from those simple things, my take on happiness back when I have trouble understanding, these days. I was a different person....
I think, now, I will try to remember the me I used to be. It will be like remembering someone who has moved very far away, and will not return. And I will try to understand what was behind that smile, for the trace seconds when he did smile — and I believe I will smile back, even though he will never see me, or know that I think of him.
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| Penmanship | 12:13am tuesday, 25th march |
Like messages of time,
strewn through the sands
like so many unwashed
bottles, stoppered and
never once glanced, so we
walk through life unseen,
never once opened by
any stray glance or word,
never once peered inside
to see the scribblings we
have seen fit to remember.
We will find it anyway,
I think, some purpose to
write within ourselves
our deepnesses and our
momentary obsessions,
our victories and even
our crimes — and we will
move as if there are eyes
that yes, these messages
will be read, will be noticed,
will make sense somehow
— and yes, that our sloppy
penmanship is remembered.
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| Temporary | 12:48am monday, 24th march |
Life is a test — this is only a test, this is only a temporary condition. It is some grand staging area of what is to come for us. This I believe and still sometimes I cannot help but act as if this world is all we have of existence. This is my faith: that there is else we will experience outside of this day and this night, and it is not to say we should not make the most of what we have here — on the contrary, this makes our time here even more crucial. This life is how we prove what we truly are. And yet, sometimes I do not act so, like this time leads nowhere else, like it matters none if I waste my days on fruitless things. "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." [Luke 12:34, NKJV] That being said, I think I have most of my wealth in the darkness, here on earth. But there are some pennies I have scrapped away visible to the heavenly lights. I will keep looking up, and beyond; I will remember I will not be here always.
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| Suffering | 1:12am saturday, 22nd march |
I like to think all the trials of my life add to something. There must be meaning to all of it, doesn't there? That there is meaning to why we suffer so? And perhaps we do not even have to wait for the fluffy clouds of Heaven to find what it is all about; perhaps we may discover something about what we have gone through at some unscheduled, crystalline moment of lucidity. Maybe just as we're doing something as pedestrian like unwrapping a piece of gum to chew, it will make sense somehow. Maybe it will come in pieces, like this happened for that reason, that happened for this reason, and maybe through some loose associations we will be able assemble a rather grand structure of why. Maybe, maybe.
I dunno. I feel that I must believe in meaning. My faith in God helps me with that, but even when I was a devout atheist (waaay back when) I never thought that it all was meaningless — I had high hopes in science, and studious endeavors. These days, I place more importance in that which is spiritual, but the essence of my thinking I don't think has changed that much, just that the telescope of my wondering is pointed in a different direction. Why do we suffer? — this question has been asked throughout all of history, recorded and unrecorded. We will ask this question individually, and as a whole species, until that day there is no more of it, and I think I will not hold my breath for that one to happen.
Such as my suffering has made me learn about myself in my own understanding of my life, if you had asked me before it all began whether I would willingly go through it, I'd have said yes. Not during it, though... that's a completely different matter indeed.
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| Footfall | 12:03am friday, 21st march |
Footfall in the dark of night, a lone step in the shadow.
This stranger traverses streets where destiny has never wandered,
talks to the ghosts of what he once was, and what he could be.
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| The Day | 12:14am thursday, 20th march |
I dream of a day where I do not dream of a day. A day that is sufficient unto itself of which I need not look ahead (or look back), where I can be there, then, and be satisfied just that I am. Is such a day merely a myth? I have heard tell of moments that people experience where — just for those moments — nothing is wrong, everyone is well, nothing is overdue, and all stress has fallen by the wayside — but just stories of them. When I did drugs, I experienced many points disguised in the garb of those moments, but such times were merely illusions — the world could have been crashing down around me, and I just would not have cared. To get some peace without such nullifiers, one has to push aside all the things pressing down on you and breathe that temporary air — just a few puffs before all those things re-encroach on your calm. However far you push those pressures away, they're always there, impatient to get back at it.
Maybe a day of hush is just a dream, after all, but it is a good one. I think I will keep dreaming of it, in the scant seconds between this task and that — it's not like I could stop that dreaming if I wanted to.
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| Stranger, Wondering | 12:07am tuesday, 18th march |
I feel sometimes that I am a stranger to this world. I have become something like an alien plopped down to where I sit, having no idea from where I am from nor how I got here. I look out with my eyes and think to myself that, no, this is not how the world looks to those else whom I view on this earth. I do not understand, at least not fully, how everyone else sees things in their philosophies; I wonder if I have ever looked at things like they did, do not remember if everything was at some point like the normal understanding of objects, actions, and causes most take for granted in their walks through this life. What is this world that is before me, now? What has it become, this day and this night?
Has my past madness taken me that far away? Will it ever be like the times that I recall not, now, like it was before the episodes of Heaven and Hell impinged upon my psyche? I think not that I can escape them even in sleep, for my dreams are strange, too. No, no escape. I am stuck with these strange pictures of the world that concoct themselves in my imagining of the things around me.
Perhaps, though, it is like a second chance, if I think of it: the world is like new to me, at least at some times; even well-traveled understandings at times fascinate me like I have never been there before. Hm. I am a strange child, having a history as far back as I do, but yes, I do feel otherwhiles like a child. Yes, then: let me get lost a little in the marvel of it all. If it is to be like this, then let me see things as if I were newly born, and understand them how I will — it might just be wonderful.
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| Mental Page 4 | 12:07am monday, 17th march |
I thought I'd finish the series out. Here is the last one before this, and this one here is the inside of the back cover of that book where I scribbled the stuff. Yes, inscribed from within that same cuckoo house:
Whited out are two friends' names. If you can't make it out, the pencil written over in the background reads, "We, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 3, are Australian." I don't know why.
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| Vaults of Time | 12:28am saturday, 15th march |
Within the vaults of time,
there is stored all of our
lost moments, those seconds
we have overlooked in the
remembrance of ourselves.
Within the vaults of time,
those futures which are held
to be so by destinies great
and minor lie still, waiting
for us to choose them.
Within the vaults of time,
the memory of night is
washed clean of its darkness
every dawn, and what we
feared sinks away, a dream.
Within the vaults of time,
death looks no different
from any other moment,
instants easily overlooked
if they be not our own.
Within the vaults of time,
there is no treasure there
but the breaths of life lived as
if they were the last to spend,
as if the vaults were empty.
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| To Do | 12:04am friday, 14th march |
I fight with my mind to drive my subconscious back in its burrow, quiet the voices that tell me of terrible things. I walk without looking left or right, for I must keep on, I must keep moving, or else the wind will press me back the steps I have taken. I have to care that I am, I breathe, I live, or else my heart will grow hard and brittle, broken by the slightest tap. I listen to the breezes that blow the fallen leaves along the ground, and I remember when I was such as one of those leaves. I dance, sometimes, alone in my room, when the rhythm of the music playing overtakes me, like wave fronts of beat pulsing through my body. I stare into blue, blue skies, asking secret questions to myself I will never answer. I love whom I love, and I need no one to tell me why, I need no reasons at all.
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| Dream Recall | 12:07am thursday, 13th march |
I recently had a dream that was reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode. It was as if I were a traveler through different dimensions, parallel realities all resembling this world that we have here. In one, I was a prisoner, in another, I think I was a homeless man, and I think there were others. In each one, I saw Rosanna Arquette, and in the last dimension I traveled before I woke up, I finally figured it out: so I went to the dream Ms. Arquette and — like a Twilight Zone character is apt to do — I told her to wake up, that what the meaning of this all was that whatever dimension I was in she and I were destined to meet; that wherever I was, I would find her somehow; and I told her that this all destiny was the workings of "true love". Yes, I remember yelling this as I was being led away, to be executed for a crime I didn't commit or some such. Then I woke up. A little hazy, my recall, but that was the gist of the thing.
I dunno. Maybe somewhere I still believe in it, like I did when I was still young and idealistic. Maybe no, not Rosanna Arquette, but yes, true love: that somewhere in me my heart speaks that it can be so, that it need not merely be a fairy tale told to children. Yes, true love: it is easy to brush aside as the fantasy of fools, difficult to really put your faith in it in this world of broken promises and missed chances. Maybe I'm not that old, after all, though I feel as if I've lived for a century; maybe these old dreams have not all been beaten out of me. Maybe the heart keeps in secret all those things we once believed, and still believes in them, however defeated these dreams do seem.
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| This Is Love | 12:11am wednesday, 12th march |
Who of you dare say he knows the secret to what love is?
Yet none would deny there is a place in the heart where it is clear:
here was love, here is love, and I know it is so: this is love.
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| Desired | 12:07am tuesday, 11th march |
What have I desired? I have wanted things impossible for a man to achieve. In my madness I did desire to be the sovereign God over all, and to be an Archangel, and to be a prophet of the ages; I desired a land called Eutopia, where all were to live forever in Heavenly bliss; I desired that there be no Hell. I have wanted, too, things of a misguided romance: I desired True Love to carry my heart through eternity, I desired to have been written of in ancient prophecy, I desired to float away into the realms concocted by my imagination's eye and never return to earth. What have I desired? All of it — the madness of wants — they poured into simple molds, if I think of it: I desired only that somehow I mattered, that someone heard me, that someone out there cared. Just a jot somewhere in the books of time: this man existed, this man lived a life.
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| In My Imagining | 12:34am monday, 10th march |
In my imagining, I have seen the mountains of Heaven, three miles high and piercing the clouds of Paradise.
In my imagining, I have smelled the burned out trails of my soul: that which I felt I needed not preserve, that I wasted in turn.
In my imagining, I have heard the bells of victory pealing from every church steeple saying that the time is nigh.
In my imagining, I have touched the fires of Hell, which left a blackness that would not wash away for years.
In my imagining, I have tasted the nectar of wondering, and I walked into three dreams while still awake.
In my imagining, I fell eight days — almost the whole way from Heaven to Hell — but caught by a nameless hand.
In my imagining, I have run through the Dark Forest of the Soul, escaped from I knew not what, but alive, alive, alive.
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| Visions Now | 12:34am saturday, 8th march |
These visions of mine have breathed
through many a dreaming, sustained
by the desires of my imagination.
What will be when my wondering
burns through its last coals of ego?
What will be left when the visions
fade, when I see no more the skies
of distant fantasies, when the flower
of my fascination withers? I think
I will seize this day, as this day of
my visions still seizes me — I will not
fade quiet into the resolution of
decay. I will light my lamp upon the
rooftop of my soul, within my spirit
sound the trumpets of my I am:
I will loose the visions of my now,
tomorrow is not yet: my dreams
still have fireworks yet to ignite.
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| Of Rain | 12:01am friday, 7th march |
I have known the rain. You know what I'm talking about, I am sure: out in the street with raindrops spilling from above, looking in through the window to a place where you don't belong. Cold and wet. If ever you're invited in, some time after that, you see things a little differently from those who were never on the outside looking in, those who were never turned away at the door. And even if you do get to be a member, some part of you will always be outside, a lingering twinge that you're not good enough for these people, or that these people are not good enough for you — or both. I dunno. I think rain is not shaken off so easily as all that, as easy as brushing off the water; somewhere inside you there haunts the memory of the storm, of the falling rain beating down.
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| Control | 12:33am thursday, 6th march |
What under our control is illusion? Is all control an illusion, after all? I remember a line from "The Sunscreen Song" that went, "your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's". I remember thinking about that line, considering that it held much truth to it; what is it that makes us decide one thing and not another? Our free will — how much do we rely on an intuition that may be influenced more by lunchtime indigestion than logic? By whim more than careful deliberation? We like to think we are in control — it is a comforting thought to decide that our fates are more or less in our own hands — but what we choose I think we owe much to what is outside pressing in than our own inner voice calling out. Thus, perhaps we can better relate to another quote: "There, but for the grace of God, go I." We are verily at the mercy of circumstances beyond our control.
I think, though, that control is not wholly illusory. We are all given a certain context from which to decide, and that includes all the arguments we are presented with for either side of the coin. We are predisposed to some things, and not others, and maybe that is part of the context, too. But if we are to be held responsible for our actions, it can only be fair that we are responsible for making something of the context, of deciding yes, of deciding no, of etching in the stone of time a piece of our fingerprint. Control is never totally ours because the context always precedes us, but to us is given power to deny even the deepest of our own selves, and to formulate a new environment in which to consider choices — in ourselves and out in the world — and the choices we paint, even if the shading is imbued by the world, reflect who we are better than anything else.
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| New | 12:15am wednesday, 5th march |
I wonder at my first emerging into existence,
the beginning of the knowing of me: I feel, I live, I am.
Some days I awake like I am new, like that I remember.
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| Nothing Fancy | 12:03am tuesday, 4th march |
I am tired today — I had a severe case of insomnia last night, resulting in a total lack of sleep. Been going on zero z's all day, and I am thinking that I will not write anything fancy today. Just hello, how are you? I am fine, considering I feel like dropping dead from exhaustion (hyperbole, of course, since I feel like I have already dropped dead from exhaustion, and I am doing this in my sleep). I still get flashes where I almost think I'm the Antichrist again, that same old madness, a broken record, faded from wear, repeating endlessly at random intervals (I date myself, don't I? CD's don't tend to repeat themselves when scratched, merely skip further down the song). Yes, my old cartoon people are there, too, including Rosanna Arquette, Jesus Christ, Michael the Archangel, and sometimes Gabriel and other people. But only occasionally — I did manage to get some work done at work today. And I did write this. Or did I? I'll have to check tomorrow. I'll get back to you on that one. 
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| Mental Page 3 | 1:17am monday, 3rd march |
From the inside back cover where I got this image. Once again, scribbled from within that one loony bin:
The whited out portion is where my name was. Jim, at the bottom, refers to Jim Morrison, a frequent visitor to my madness. Just some more general weirdness I thought I'd share.
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| Recollection 9 | 1:11am saturday, 1st march |
I once imagined a world that was nothing at all, and I was Oblivion incarnate; Death was my wife, and we had been before there was anything else. Such was one of my fantasies in my grand madness. I imagined that even God drew his source from that which was Oblivion, namely, me. The idea wasn't entirely original, though; I had read about this Oblivion in the flesh (so to speak) in a comic book (pairing myself with Death was mine, however — and she was cast, of course, as Rosanna Arquette). My madness seemingly took its playing pieces from random swatches of my experience. (Come to think of it in retrospect, a lot of my philosophy back when drew its source from comic books — simplistic but catchy, easily digested and remembered.) Anyway, the story went that the creation of the universe and everything in it somehow came about when Death had left me before the beginning of time, which led to the explosion of the pre-temporal realm which was inhabited (and held together, apparently) by the two Oblivion and Death, and I had awakened in this body in search of her... I had found her, after all these eons, born on earth like me.
One interesting storyline twist was like a plotline from a cheesy 50's sci-fi story: I imagined that I saw her materialize in my mind, Death in her female guise — my (Oblivion's) wife — and what she said was, "Hey! I learned how to teleport!" I was here to catch her where she appeared; she, innocently, blinking out of the pre-temporal realm just out as far as she could go, not realizing that that realm would all ruin in rupture without her being there the Yin to my Yang. I never liked that outcome to the story, and even if I had nothing else with which to end that plot, I preferred it up in the air rather than that kind of a tricky storyline. Better, sometimes, not to know how the story ends: still full of potential, still a place and time where anything could happen — because it just might.
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